Dr Steinbock: Media never really die; they just find a new form.

With Web 2.0, everyone becomes a broadcaster. Who drives profits?
In 1996, Andy Grove, then CEO of Intel, said: "Who cares about 500 TV channels when you can have 500,000 channels, with almost comparable capabilities?" What is often forgotten are the implications. What is the objective for companies in Silicon Valley can be a nightmare for media planners in Madison Avenue. You have to create business models for all these technological capabilities. Most importantly, it creates new kinds of opportunities, especially through globalisation, for countries like Singapore that know how to identify the right market segments and how to respond to them with the right strategies.

Transforming media, marketing and advertising
There is a new deal going on which is transforming each category. Take, for instance, direct mail. The pioneers of direct mail, like Lester Wunderman in the 1960s, perceived a point of time when direct mail will be able to address the user directly, without intermediaries.

The Washington Post – when you look at it, and you use the old phrase "where's the money?" – is no longer a newspaper really. It does very different things. It may have a very high penetration in the United States, but its circulation peaked in 1993 and has declined since, by 20 per cent. Internet revenue is growing, but not as quickly as ad income is falling. Its main revenue source nowadays is education.

The mobile revolution
Some people in Hollywood are very concerned that mobile will be a threat to them. I urge them to look at two trends at the same time: the fact that big, flatscreen TVs are selling rapidly, and the fact that people love to use their mobiles, but for different purposes. If I have my mobile phone and something important happens, I want to see the headline news right away, but I would want to see the in-depth coverage on my flatscreen TV. So these are complementary opportunities. Media never really die; they just find a
new form.

No longer just about technology
When I was working on my book The Mobile Revolution, I interviewed 80 senior (IT) executives, and I was trying to find the lowest common denominator for all these players. It came down to two: this entire business has changed in the sense that it used to be a technology-driven business. Now it is driven by marketing, and this is tough for people with an engineering background. Those who learned to complement their capabilities did very well, because ultimately, it’s an engineering-driven business. But those who started with the assumption that technology was enough, fell behind.

The other lesson is the role of the emerging markets. Those players that didn't know how to move there fast, how to embrace them, and create new revenue models in order to thrive in these markets, struggled. Those companies that knew how to do this, and were flexible enough to deal with change, thrived.

Web 2.0 can be defined in terms of several categories which are supported by marketers and advertisers. Search is dominant. Online video is very important, and social networking has been exploding in the past one or two years. While most marketers and media planners, who are so critical in using this media space, feel there is great potential, in terms of the average online marketing budget, they still don't know how to translate this into practice. So these opportunities haven't been fully utilised to the maximum yet, and this is bound to happen over the next few years.

The Presidential fillip
The 2008 elections are really introducing Web 2.0 in the United States. The US elections usually drive consumer behaviour and the use of marketing media. For 2008, irrespective of the candidate and party, all of them have
adopted Web 2.0.

US elections have always been important in this regard: in 1948, the adoption of broadcast TV happened with the 1948 election. The widespread use of FM radio happened in 1968. Cable TV, 1982. Laptops, 1992. Internet, 1996. And now, it’s Web 2.0.